Oldtimers only please

[Bullet123]

For you collectors that have been around a long time, Please compare the pre EBAY, pre CGC days of comics and the difficulties you felt when trying to collect a run or certain issues of books. It seems that, at least to me, if your are patient enough, a copy of what you are looking for will eventually show up. I am sure that was not always the case. Take me on a trip down memory lane. Thanks for posting

[Point Five]

Well, I'm not an old-timer by any means, but comic collecting pre-ebay was definitely a challenge! I can remember traipsing all over NYC on baking summer days in the mid-80s trying to fill in elusive missing issues of Flaming Carrot, Concrete, and various silver age Marvel titles.... and in the early/mid 90s, it took me a full 7 years to complete a low-grade four-issue run of EC's Psychoanalysis.

 

So, there was some fun in chasing down issues and being excited to find them after a long journey. But now that I'm a GA collector, ebay/etc is absolutely invaluable. Back then you pounced on almost any issue you saw, because who knew if you'd ever see it again...these days you can be a lot more discriminating and go after the specific books or conditions you want. The GA collection I have now would have been impossible in those early days, and I'm real grateful for all the resources (including this board!) at our disposal nowadays.

[Red Hook]

By cracky.....let me put my old thinking cap on now........

 

I started collecting in 1966.....bought from the newstands first....filled in by trading with some of my friends in the 6th, 7th and 8th grade....didn't care about condition (still have a couple of those).....then got into buying by mail from Howard Rogofsky and Robert Bell. Decent condition issues, I thought they were all NM, but god knows what they were. In 1967, Avengers #1 was a four year old book! I had a straight run of Avengers and a run of ASM from about #6 or #7 up.

 

Hit conventions in 1968, 69 and 70. Lost interest when I got to the middle of high school. Sold my entire collection of about 900 books in 1976 or thereabout for $350.

 

Started collecting again in 1982. No mail order this time.....I remember thinking the guy with the Mile High Ads was nuts for the prices he was asking. When Forbidden Planets, a SF store opened near Union Square in Manhattan, they sold back issues down stairs. I got quite a number of issues from them....replacing a lot of FFs. I still have my receipts for those. Paid no more than $10 to $40 an issue. Hit some more cons. Finally cooled off around 1985, but kept my books this time. I thought they were all NM.

 

It wasn't until 2002 that I decided to hit another convention. A Big Apple at the old location in the church basement. In fall of 2003 discovered the boards.

 

Pray for me.

 

Red

[Artboy99]

Pre Ebay/internet you were more likely to "settle" for lesser graded books because that was all that you could find.

Like the Hulk #1 I bought in 1985. It was at best a 2.0 by todays standards, but it was the only Hulk #1 in my area...trust me I had asked around/ looked.

My Goal was to complete an Incredible Hulk run that included issue 1-6, TalestoAstonish 59-101, Hulk 102 to latest issue. By the time I finished the run the latest issue was I think in the 260's. HUlk's in the 260's were terrible and I gave up my collection.

Now here I am years later doing it all over again.

I think my new collection is in far better condition thanks to the internet.

 

Artboy99

[Sharkey]

In my opinion, the availability of finding books through the Internet has taken away a lot of the fun of "searching" for certain books. As many have said, anybody can build a great collection, they just need cash. And to some extent that's true.

 

However if you are focusing on a specific title or genre that is truly difficult to find, then even with Ebay and Heritage and other sites, it may take you a long time to build a particular run.

 

Back in the old days (I am 41 -- not super old but I was trying to collect runs in my pre-teen years) you had only a few things at your disposal: Comic Back issue catalogs like Robert Bell, Howard Rogofsky, and others; comic book conventions (if you lived in a large enough city), and second-hand bookstores and garage sales/flea markets. Oh, and trading comics with other kids -- a lost art in today's uber-high-grade focused mindsets.

 

I lived in a small town in central Illinois. Never went to a comic convention until 1988 (Chicago ComicCon at the old Ramada Hotel). The options and outlets were few and far between

 

So as a kid in the early 1970s trying to collect comics, I had to either purchase comics from those catalogs (i didn't have much money at my disposal) or I had to hit all the local garage sales and flea markets and hope to find stuff. And I did a lot of trading with a network of kids in my home town. Whenever a new kid would move to town, if he was into comics, everybody would try to get first crack at trading with him so they could land all the good "new stuff". Putting together complete runs of titles was nearly impossible unless you had enough money to order from those back-issue catalogs. At least in my home town of 22,000 people it was nearly impossible.

 

I was lucky enough to score a number of good garage sale lots that had some Silver Age classics so I had a nice bunch of keys and a smattering of 12-cent Marvels throughout the Silver Age runs, but I never put together full runs until i started hitting cons and buying collections from people who advertised in the Comics Buyers Guide in the late 1980s. Then once I started selling back issues at comic shows around that time, it became easier to locate and purchase collections and fill in runs, and sell the rest. Once Ebay came along I stopped doing shows. I've bought and sold runs of ASM and Hulk and other titles through Ebay and in my opinion it just isn't a fun way to collect. It's too easy!

 

Now I have specifically focused on an area that is difficult to collect, just to bring some of the challenge of "the hunt" back into my collecting habits. If i buy a book every other month, I am doing well. I also try not to buy anything above a 9.0 in order to keep the spending at a reasonable level. I am pefectly happy with a nice clean 7.0 or 8.0 copy of a Pre-Hero Marvel book.

 

Hey, wake up you whippersnappers!!!!!

[Point Five]

Red, that's wild...I went to Forbidden Planet all through the 1980s. I used to love that place! We were probably there at the same time at some point.

 

Even as a kid, I had an infatuation with the "really old" comics. When I was 9-10 years old (circa '80 or so), I would go down to their basement and pick out the oldest issue of (say) Detective that I could afford with my allowance. The current # on the newsstands might be #494, but here was this store that had 12-cent (!) back issues that went back to #333...or if I could cough up an extra quarter, maybe that beat-up issue of #308 on the wall. Funny to think about today!

 

Silver age Marvels were incredibly cheap in those days too, and I was collecting various SA Marvel titles through the mid-80s (back when TMNT and other indies were the hot items, and silver age books were dead in the water). Of course, with hindsight I wish I'd been a little more discriminating back then, but it was still a pretty cool time to be a comic collector.

[nearmint]

In the old days...

 

CBG was the bible for back issue collectors. I think mine normally came on Wednesday, and every Wednesday afternoon I called home to see if it had arrived. I'd spend a good two hours that night pouring over every ad, including the classifieds. Being on the west coast, I was at a disadvantage, as collectors further East received their copies a day or two before I did. So, if there was anything of interest in a particular issue, I had to call right away to have a chance at it. I purchased my first Church books out of CBG ads, Action #33 & #46, from a collector in Chicago. I later traded them to the dentist.

There were occasional deals. I know one collector(a board member) who called about an ad with several high grade early Sensations that had "funny marks" on the covers. I think he bought them all for about condition guide. Of course, they were all Church copies.

Any dealer worth their salt mailed out catalogs, and any day one or more arrived, my plans for the evening immediately changed. A lot of the Silver Age I currently own came out of Harley catalogs and World's Finest catalogs.

I called dealers frequently. I used to call Steve at Metro and just ask him what cool high-grade Golden Age he'd acquired recently. I remember one day he'd just gotten in NM copies of Action #23 and Detective #66. He was asking $1000 each. I spent 24 hours deciding which one I wanted, but when I called back the next day, both had sold.

I remember when I first heard about some guy named Gary Carter who had a bunch of Mile Highs. I mailed him a letter asking if he had any Actions available, and he gave me a call. Seems he had a new magazine about to come out, something called "Comic Book Marketplace", and he offered to send me a copy. I met Gary in San Diego a few months later, where he had an amazing assortment of Church books for sale.

I'm sure I'll think of more stuff later.

[Harvey Dude]

As a golden age collector there was very limited venues to acquire my wares. I did not subscribe to any publications so my comic purchasing world was rather limited. I dealt mainly with the Dentist. Since I had an interest in esoteric and anti-Communist books, I pretty much grabbed up whatever became available since I believed that I would never have the chance to come across these scarce books again. Price guide only listed three grades. If I ran across an unread copy, I would have paid handsomely to acquire the book. In the old days, I was blissfully naive and I did not have the foresight to think that one day the computer would play such a large part in my buying endeavors. Then and now, the thrill of the hunt is what keeps me interested and, even to this day, I like to try to go after the rare to scarce books over the high demand issues.

[The Black Hand ®]

In the olden days I wasn't as interested in filling runs as much as I was in getting a variety of books. Also back then I was buying silver age right off the rack. When I was a kid I knew a few golden age collectors who had virtually everything but I didn't have any real income to collect complete runs. But still is was more fun then.

[Red Hook]

Speaking of the old days.....check out this two part real audio interview with Phil Seuling.....

 

http://www.tvparty.com/comics/seuling.html

 

Red

[namisgr]

In the old days...

CBG was the bible for back issue collectors.

 

Hah! In the real ye olden tymes, TBG was the word and the way for back issue collectors (Alan Light's The Buyer's Guide). Most ads did not include information about condition in their comic listings, but alot of books were available, perhaps as many as can be found on the Internet today. Other than TBG, the sources of old comics in the early to mid seventies were the few cons (went to Phil Seuling's New York shows in '74 and '75, and it seemed that every comic ever printed could be found in that dealer's room), and local flea markets. Once again, condition mattered little, and my friends and I read all our purchases voraciously. My collecting goal was filling in large runs of books I most enjoyed reading, particularly Spiderman, Thor, and Fantastic Four. The cool new titles off the newstand included Spidey, Conan, Green Lantern, Batman, Detective, and Swamp Thing, but Thor and the FF lost alot of luster for me when Kirby left Marvel. Undergrounds were big, too, for a college kid discovering new, ah, states of consciousness.

 

There is still the thrill of the hunt in today's cons, even with their much higher production values (and what doesn't have higher production values in today's society), and also by scouring the Internet. I especially enjoy buying raw books at cons. It is most reminiscent of the old times of hunting through box after box of books for the cool ish that you just gotta have, and there is a thrill to holding, smelling, and leafing through an old book that simply cannot be duplicated with a slab.

[SUPREMO]

In the old days up to about 1985, there were many undiscovered warehouses that had numerous books returned from retail stores that didn't sell them in a given month. I remember one collection Harley Yee picked up that had multiples of many books in VF to NM (sorry, 8.0 - 9.4) printed between 1970 or 1971 and 1977 or 78. Some books had many multiples while for others, there were none. Case in point: key x-men, spider-man etc. issues rarely didn't sell out at any retail etablishment and therefore, weren't returned. That's how I got most of my beloved Wrightson issues. I remember paying $3.00 for any book from that collection that didn't guide for at least that much and thinking I was getting hosed. Today 3.00 is how much it costs in gas to even get to a comic store.

[ronm3-migration]

I went to Forbidden Planet as well. They have changed locations since then to a smaller spot. I used to buy the Godaikin robots there as well. I started to go there when i was 14 years old. I also went to the Batcave on West 3rd street and Village comics which used to be right on 6th avenue right near the Waverly Theatre.I then found Pinochio comics on Ave. P in Brooklyn.

When i hit 18 I ran into Brain Damage comics in Brooklyn and that is when I really started to collect. Carlos Rosario was one of the best. I wish I knew what happened to him. At 20 years old I finally found Metropolis with the great one Stephen Fishler. Steve I went to your house in Bensonhurst and spoke to your mother the first time I went to find you. I think your store address was at that address so i went there. Your mother said you were at work.

I would also like to tell you that when you used to write me checks from Chase bank I always knew how much you had in the accounts because the girls would tell me.

So now it is roughly 16 years later so i figure I can tell you that now. Sorry I was 21 I couldnt help myself. We are about the same age so i was trying to figure out how this guy the same age as me is buying all of these expensive books.

I hope you read this.

As far as availability of books I used to buy books from Carlos. I used to see unbelievable collections come through all of the time. He could get any book.

I remember how proud he was of an Amazing Man 5(1) restored that Carlos was so proud of and told me I should buy it. I turned it down for a Batman 3 and a Detective 37.

So comparing what is available today as compared to what was back then it is the same for me.

I will tell you one thing I remember vividly was how normal restoration was at that time and was not as big of a deal as it is today. You would be paying almost as much for the restored books as you would for the regular books. As long as you had the work done sheets from Susan you were good to go.

[Currin Comics]

LCS and Mail Order-plus I would buy the OS for the comic shops that were'nt in my area, just to get a phone #, little did I realize after the 4th purchase, that they were the same #'s as three years ago. It has come a long way indeed.

[sterlingcomics]

Be healed, and let all of the evil spirits come OOOUUTTTT!

 

Nice flashback Red!

[Pirate]

7-11 to start around 83, then started going to a LCS about an hour away. Quit for a year or two in the 90's (didn't sell anything), did some back issue buying at LCS and some mail order. now sitting on a pile of 90's [embarrassing lack of self control] with some good stuff mixed in

[grider67]

Started in 73' (at U-Totems/7-11s), sold the collection in 88', started again in 90' (been going ever since).

[awe4one]

In my opinion, the availability of finding books through the Internet has taken away a lot of the fun of "searching" for certain books. As many have said, anybody can build a great collection, they just need cash. And to some extent that's true.

 

Yep...#1 change between pre and post eBay...

 

Jim

[mar-vell]

Red, that's wild...I went to Forbidden Planet all through the 1980s. I used to love that place! We were probably there at the same time at some point.

 

Even as a kid, I had an infatuation with the "really old" comics. When I was 9-10 years old (circa '80 or so), I would go down to their basement and pick out the oldest issue of (say) Detective that I could afford with my allowance. The current # on the newsstands might be #494, but here was this store that had 12-cent (!) back issues that went back to #333...or if I could cough up an extra quarter, maybe that beat-up issue of #308 on the wall. Funny to think about today!

 

Silver age Marvels were incredibly cheap in those days too, and I was collecting various SA Marvel titles through the mid-80s (back when TMNT and other indies were the hot items, and silver age books were dead in the water). Of course, with hindsight I wish I'd been a little more discriminating back then, but it was still a pretty cool time to be a comic collector.

 

Yeah! Right on! I went to forbidden planet in the 80's! You know i also remember a store on like 14th and 6th or thereabouts! A little 2nd floor shop that might have been called Gary's --i can still remember the shop owner pointing out the hidden panel message in conan #8!!!! Cool!

 

as a reply to the main topic of this thread i would say the only thing better about the good old days was the prices on back issues! As far as collecting goes things have never been better than today unless of course you were blessed enough to buy all the early silver age marvels off the stands back in 1961-65 or some other legendary run of books like that!

[esquirecomics]

In my opinion, the availability of finding books through the Internet has taken away a lot of the fun of "searching" for certain books. As many have said, anybody can build a great collection, they just need cash.

 

This is sooooo very true. In trying to put together my More Fun run I have actually stopped actively looking behind running a set e-bay search, checking out auctions that send me catalogues, responding to e-mails I am sent and going to conventions. I could so easily complete the entire run without ANY difficulty, including in HG, if I wanted. But the missing issues I need keep seemingly finding me on their own. Not as fun. I am purposefully dragging the process out now.

 

But, as far as the more rarer and estoeric items, such as the anti-commie books I am looking for, even the Internet reveals how rare/scarce they are. Those still never show up.